An Easier Pathway To Better Process Management and Improvement

I keep telling myself that the world is ready for a new way to manage processes. The next few weeks will show me whether I am right or wrong. I know this because of what I’ve seen and learned in the past 10 years.

For more than 10 years I’ve worked with APQC’s Process Classification Framework® (PCF).In that time I’ve seen hundreds of organizations around the world attempt to achieve excellence using common process management techniques. Those that succeed typically do so at great cost. It is the rare organization that does so with any kind of ease or elegance. Careers are made and broken on decisions made in the process management space. Decisions sometimes take years to reveal their true effect.

Organizations that succeed – not just privately and benefitting shareholders, but publicly in both financial performance and acknowledgement of success in formal awards programs – have a few simple things in common. It seems like successful organizations not only know why they exist – mission and vision statements – but can clearly articulate to anyone within the organization precisely what they do to achieve that mission. They also can clearly articulate their performance relative to their peers, and are on a constant search for improvement. These organizations measure their performance, manage their processes in order to reduce performance gaps or achieve lofty goals, and learn about ways to improve from the world around them.

These things are easy to list, and sound simple to achieve, but are difficult when put into practice. Performance management through measurement and common dashboard tools is easy enough once, but doing it in a consistent and repeatable fashion is a true challenge. Scaling across an entire organization is even more difficult. Furthermore, finding partners to compare against is a constant struggle. How do you ensure that they measure things in the same fashion as you?

What about process management? There as many schools of thought on how to manage business processes as there are process management experts in the world. In my experience, the ones which are successful are the ones which withstand the seemingly regular organizational structure changes and even more frequent business rule changes. Successful organizations are ones that don’t waste time trying to use flowcharts to solve all of their process management problems. There are other ways to clearly understand what you’re supposed to be doing and how to do it. Drawing a diagram with boxes, lines, and diamonds may not be the best way.

And finally, process improvement. There are literally entire curricula around this very important topic. Research here goes back hundreds of years. The common problem remains however: how do you quickly access best practice content in the context of what you’re doing already? How do you leverage best practices from other industries?

And this brings me to my assertion: the world is ready for a new way to do things. The world is ready for a way to integrate measurement, management, and learning about process into a single easy to use tool. The world is ready for MosaiQ™. MosaiQ brings together the best of measurement – dashboards and benchmarking, including APQC’s Open Standards benchmarks; the best of management – process frameworks and content management, including APQC’s PCF; and the best of best practices – APQC’s Knowledge Base and its related content. MosaiQ brings these three things together seamlessly in a single easy to use tool.